Diamond Star Quilt ca.1900?

Diamond Star pieces

Diamond Star Quilt Remnants

My mother gave me these blocks she salvaged from a quilt found under my grandmother’s mattress. Here’s what I know and surmise:
In the 1980s, my grandparents – Emmett and Mary Hamrick Tague – sold their house and moved in with my uncle, due to their failing health. When Mom dismantled Grandma’s full-sized bed, she found a shredded quilt apparently used to protect the mattress from the open springs. Mom cut out the “good parts” and passed them on to me, saying maybe I could frame one.
So 30 years later, I decided to see what kind of quilt could have been made of 25 blocks with pieces of binding on some of the corners. The most reasonable layout is on point.

Diamond Star Fabric Detail

Diamond Star Fabric Detail

Whoever made the quilt used a single blue fabric with a fancy-woven stripe. The binding remnants are of a 1930s solid medium blue so was apparently a replacement. It was machine-pieced and hand-quilted, and there was a narrow white sashing and setting triangles.

As for who made it, the quilt is probably too old to have been made by Grandma Tague. Also, I have no quilts by her that weren’t made from scraps or have this complex a block, so this isn’t her style. If her mother,  Mary Levina Dunkle Hamrick, made it, this is the only one of her quilts still existing. Or it might have been made by Grandpa Tague’s mother, Rose Brown Tague. Her other quilts were also made with solid fabrics purchased specifically for the project.  Either way, it was like Grandma to use something vintage as pragmatically as for a mattress pad.

About Jaye

Modern, original, and art quilt designer-maker. Sewing instructor. Quilt history buff. Former oil painter, writer, musician, fund raiser.

Posted on January 15, 2015, in Family Antiques, Quilts and Fiber Arts and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.

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